My first Kilt article.

[Father Bill]

About the clerical collar, I'd assumed (not knowing anything about it) that it was simply a vestige of wearing a white shirt or neckcloth under an ordinary stand collar (what nowadays we call a Nehru collar) on a black coat.

Precisely. Those who were literate extended their shirt through a neck-cloth similar to the ones that mount a jabot on the fancier versions. It was a sign of privilege and garnered a certain amount of respect in a generally illiterate society. The shirt itself would be either a buttoned one or a single piece pulled over the head as a blouse. The black notch that clergy wear was orginally a separate garment - either a cassock (which itself is a form of tunic) or more recently a vest with such a collar meant to mimic the cassock.

The idea of a shirt on backwards came because celluloid collars which were popular about a century ago could have been put on backwards to mimic clerical wear, although usually when it is mentioned it's just an old and worn out joke - about that century old.

In recent times it has morphed into something new that again mimics the more recent versions: a shirt buttoned up the front (although usually the buttons are concealed with a placket) with a sewn down collar that makes a tube opening on either side of the neck. Into that, a white nylon strip is inserted to the black cloth tube on either side, giving a visual appearance similar to the original concept of a white shirt with tied neckband under a cassock or vest. In fact, it's what I'm wearing right now as I prepare to celebrate this morning's mass.

As an interesting side-note, some cassocks are made with the tubes just inside the stand-up collar. In that way, clergy in very hot climates can wear a cassock with very little (or I suppose, nothing!) underneath it, if it is the practice in their area to wear the cassock as street-wear which, technically, it is and always has been (thus the black stand-up collar with the notch). If for example, one were to walk about in downtown Paris, one might still encounter priests wearing the cassock on the street as I did only a few years ago.

Another interesting observation on the notch - Monks and Friars in some traditions wear exactly the same white neckband protruding about an eighth of an inch above a black collar that goes all around... but with no notch.